


Kamikaze

by spicyjarvis (orphan_account)



Series: kamikaze [1]
Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: ANGST FUCKING HELL, Angst, Another excuse to shamelessly hurt my boy Peter?, Avengers are a family, BAMF Peter Parker, BAMF Sam Alexander, BAMF everybody tbh, BAMF everyone, Bisexual Character(s), Blood, DUM-E and U too!, Dead Aunt May, Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, Domestic Avengers, Domestic Fluff, Gay Character(s), Gen, Gun Violence, Humour, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Peter Parker, I hurt my son but I still love him, I invented a fucking war, JARVIS is here!, Let's hear it for the LGBT+ superhero community everybodyyy, M/M, Minor Character Death, Orphan Peter Parker, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Peter is 19 and Sam is 20, Protective Avengers, Spiderman and Nova are the gayest superhero/vigilante duo in this astral realm, Tony Stark Still Has Arc Reactor, all foreign languages are from google translate, and a SECRET ORGANISATION, correct, lbr, ocs but they're evil pricks, torture?, trigger warning, what's this?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-05-21 23:38:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14925128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/spicyjarvis
Summary: Clint Barton has been trained to expect many, many things, but when he finds Peter Parker unconscious, half-dead and bleeding out in a Moldovan ditch, he certainly does not expect the shit storm that comes after it.





	1. prologue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a note: this sam is /not/ sam wilson. lol.  
> thank you to my awesome betas for helping me to edit this.
> 
> tw: gun violence, nightmares.

 

 

 

**19th of November 2018**

**03:23**

 

For the first time in three days, Peter Parker wakes up gasping.

 

The nightmares have lessened ever since he and Sam have started to share a bed, but not even the solacing warmth of his boyfriend is enough to suppress the memories that bite him back with bloody fangs. His chest is heaving. He wipes sweat from his forehead, tastes its thick moisture in the air, feels it soaking into the roots of his hair.

 

Beside him, the duvets shift. The warm, tan hand that had been previously pressed against the flexor of his elbow moves up to rest on his shoulder and then to the back of his neck. “Pete?” the softest whisper inquires. “Was it a nightmare?”

 

He drops his head. Lets the hand cup his cheek, fingers careful against his slick skin. The warmth of his boyfriend’s body is a bed of roses in itself, unwavering and constant, warning off the bitter cold of that one night out in the street, blood pooling from his—

 

— “Peter. Peter, baby.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“You spaced out.” Sam closes and opens his hand to reveal blue energy above his palm, casting pools of light as soft as the moon’s glow up the wall and across the points of their chin. It’s peaceful, like lying under the stars at midnight, or sleeping safely in the arms of the one you love. “Do you want to talk about it?”

 

“Not really.”

 

It goes without saying that Sam understands his reluctance to open up. He always understands — it’s part of his patient charm, a trait that is dominant in his attitude even through his boisterous and extroverted nature. “It’s early,” he comments.

 

Peter’s eyes flit up to Sam. The light leaves shadows in the contours of his bronze face, a face so beautiful that even the collapse in his almond eyes and the dark bruise across his cheekbone gifted to him earlier by a mugger’s flying fist does nothing to tarnish it. His hair is messy from sleep, dark and soft and flawless as it always seems to be. He is just so, so perfect, and Peter has never felt luckier to be the one lying in bed beside him.

 

And he’s half alien, of all things — score.

 

“How early?"

 

“Past three.”

 

“Sorry for waking you up,” Peter murmurs. Detaching himself from his boyfriend’s gangly limbs, he stands up and crosses the bedroom to the door. “I’m going to grab a drink.”

 

“Baby,” Sam warns, moving to follow him. They leave the bedroom side-by-side, not bothering to find the lightswitch and seeing only by the energy hovering above Sam’s palm. “If you’re going to have a drink, it’s either water or tea. No coffee at this hour no matter how much you think you need it. Or alcohol. I know you’ve hidden that Smirnoff vodka somewhere.”

 

They’re used to this — waking up at strange times of the day whether it be at the hand of a nightmare or not, probably bothering the neighbours with the noise they make just trying to make a pot of tea (it’s a wonder they haven’t been warned by their landlord for their ruckus yet). After all, collectively balancing jobs, university classes and a secret sidelife as a vigliante duo doesn’t exactly give one a stable sleep schedule.

 

And it’s hard. Peter can admit that much. There are certainly times where he’s wanted to hang up the Spiderman suit for good in order to make room for the more ‘average’ aspects of his life, such as his job, his education and his wonderful boyfriend. It always seemed like the easiest way to take a break to him — to just forget it ever happened in the first place.

 

“Not even a Seabreeze? I’ll make one for you too.”

  
  
“No cocktails. We don’t have any cranberry juice left, anyway. You want some warm milk and honey?”

  
  
He giggles and stumbles into Sam’s shoulder. “Only toddlers with fevers drink that, silly.”

 

Sam pushes the kitchen door open with his foot and finds the lightswitch. He closes his hand and, when he opens it, the energy ball in his palm had dissipated and left nothing but a soft burning smell. “Good thing you’re a little baby,” he says as he pulls the honey from the cupboard above the sink. “One warm milk and honey coming up, for the cutest baby alive. Get me the milk, will you? Is there any lactose free stuff?”

 

“Here.” Peter passes him the milk carton. “And, uhh… no. Sorry.”

 

“You’re going out for it after your shift tomorrow.”

 

“Fine. But only if you give me the money. I’m not buying you _your_ milk with _my_ money,” Peter tells him, taking a seat on the countertop.

 

Sam doesn’t say anything — just presses a kiss against Peter’s clammy forehead and then sets about mixing a good dollop of honey into the glass of milk, talking the whole time about his awful new Punjabi professor and how his helmet could do with a good polishing and about the ‘intolerable’’ new manager in training at his work. The sound of his Arizonian accent filling the kitchen is akin to a lullaby singing Peter to sleep, the familiarity of it drowning out the anxieties that still linger under his skin.

 

 _This,_ Peter is thinking, _this is what it is to feel at home._

 

“—and, get this, he said to me, ‘that isn’t how you make foam patterns’! As if this new guy has the right to come in and- hey, are you listening, Pete? Your drink is on the counter next to you if you want it while it’s fresh.”

 

It feels warm against his knee and he blinks his eyes open, having hardly realised that they’d closed in the first place, before blindly feeling around until he finally finds the mug’s handle. With shaky hands he picks it up and holds it close to him. “Sorry,” he mumbles, and takes a long sip of his drink. “I’m really tired. The milk and honey is really good. Thank you, Sammy.”

 

“Baby,” Sam murmurs, and reaches over to tuck away the hair that falls limply over Peter’s eyes. His fingertips then brush ever so softly against his forehead and then down his cheekbone, coming to a stop on his jaw. The impact of that touch alone sends waves of comfort lapping at his nerves. “D’you want to go back to bed? We can cuddle and listen to— to that band you like, yeah? Bad Suns.”

 

There’s a static pause.

 

“No, no. Can’t think about sleeping.”

 

And he really can’t, especially after waking up from a nightmare. Not even when Sam holds him close and sings the songs his mother used to sing to him all those years ago into his ear. Not even after a mug of warm milk and honey, his personal remedy to relieving the stress of bad nightmares. Besides, their strange tradition of watching terrible Adam Sandler comedies at ridiculous hours of the day is something he holds close to his heart.

 

“Sure. What’ll it be today — _Jack and Jill_ or _Spanglish?”_

 

“Ooh. Feels like a _Jack and Jill_ day, I think.”

 

One awful Adam Sandler movie later sees them sleepily curled up on the couch with only each other for company, their apartment dark save for the dim, ominous glow of the distant lamps that line the streets outside, casting pools of orange that stretch across their walls and ceiling through the half-closed shutter blinds. The hum of New York traffic, white noise over the tranquility of the early morning, is the only sound to break their comfortable silence.

 

It’s peaceful — so, so peaceful, to the point where Peter’s nightmare goes forgotten and is replaced by absolute serenity. He doesn’t remember the last time he felt quite as relaxed as he does now, protected from the cold that tries to linger by the warmth and security of his boyfriend’s tanned arms.

 

“You smell nice,” Sam breathes into his shoulder. “Like… like you. You smell like you, and it’s so, so nice.”

 

Peter only just manages to contain the adoration that bounds out of his heart, like an excited puppy, for the man he loves. “You’re so soppy,” he murmurs, voice warbled by affection.

 

“Soppy isn’t a bad thing,” huffs Sam, but his grin is dopey.

 

“Yeah, but—”

 

And that’s when he feels it — that frightfully familiar twist of the stomach that leaves his every nerve drowning in dread and his heart racing to the point of overdrive, so sudden it’s as if a switch had been flipped. With its sheer intensity it throws him off the sofa and upside down onto the ceiling.

 

It has to be now, doesn’t it? It has to be right _now_ that Parker luck comes crawling out of the shadows to bite him in the ass with fangs sharper than they’ve ever been. It has to be _now_ and not at a much more convenient time, like during their patrol or as he’s walking home from work, doesn’t it?

 

“Peter,” Sam breathes out, scrambling onto his feet.

 

“Spidey sense,” Peter pants, chest heaving with the onset of a panic he cannot yet source. “I don’t— God, fuck, it’s so—” He takes a shaking hand off the ceiling and digs his fingers into his hair. “Fuck. _Fuck."_

 

Sam’s hands are alight with a dangerous glow, then, not daring to move even just to turn on the living room light. “Peter,” he says, “Peter, baby, your webshooters. They’re on the kitchen counter.”

 

Rough apartment life exposes one to a wide umbrella of strange noises — yelling, banging, even the tuneless shrill of a trombone at inconvenient hours a couple of times — but Peter hasn’t ever heard anything as anxiety-driving as the string of thuds he hears, each rapid beat a new twist in his stomach.

 

Only, almost as fast as it starts, the thudding stops, and is replaced by the sound of the window shattering from their bedroom.

 

“Fuck,” Sam swears, and races into the kitchen, the light his hands offered going with him.

 

His spidey sense is a constant presence drumming in the back of his head — screaming, screaming, _screaming_ for him to get the fuck out of the apartment, to get himself somewhere where he can be alone and safe in the arms of his beautiful, half-alien boyfriend again—

 

And then their bedroom door is broken inwards and the crash of splintering wood pulls his attention away with angry fists. Somewhere, somehow, there’s a voice that reminds him to get his shit together, to get on the ground and fight whatever is coming his way like he does every day out on the streets. It’s no different. _It’s no different._

 

Sam finally skids back into the living room to throw Peter his webshooters and he drops to the ground to catch them. “Your- your helmet is in the room,” he says, voice warbled by the terror that squeezes his throat. “You- I-”

 

“Breathe, baby,” Sam murmurs.

 

But he goes unheard, for the heavy footfall that charges into the living room is so loud — so sudden and unexpected, what with how uneffective his spidey sense is proving to be — that he drops the webshooters on the floor beneath his feet.

 

There has to be at least ten or fifteen of them — men wearing helmets and body armour of black, armed to the fucking teeth with some sort of horrifying air rifles, all aimed at Sam and Sam only. One of them, the ringleader if his position at the front of the group is anything to judge by, speaks to them in a foreign tongue that neither of them recognise and then nudges his gun in Peter’s direction.

 

“ _Fuck._ Fuck you! What the fuck do you want?” Sam is shouting, but none of them seem to be paying attention to what he’s saying.

 

Peter’s fingers are curled into fists, nails digging into his palms, and he doesn’t dare to raise his hands above his head yet. He has no intention of letting them win that easily — and neither does Sam, who only raises his glowing fists higher as if to challenge them to a duel right there and then.

 

The same man speaks again, waving one arm in Sam’s direction. However, Sam is scorching the ground at their feet before the men can so much as take a single advancing step, quick to assert his dominance over them in the situation. Peter cannot help but admire his boyfriend’s fearlessness even in the most terrifying of predicaments.

 

This time, when the man speaks, half of those guns turn to Peter. His spidey sense blares again, painful like a migraine, and he grits his teeth against the anxiety that freezes him to the ground. The impulse to fight — to take power over them just like Sam had, to let them know that he is not willing to back down so well — melts away like liquid metal, replaced by terror that seizes every nerve in his body in blooded fists.

 

“Don’t move,” Sam says.

 

“No shit,” Peter bites out, because sarcasm is probably the only form of defence he can manage right now.

 

The room drops into silence — a jittery silence far too unnatural for what is happening right now, an uncomfortable silence he’d never never expected to fall upon them like this. The leader, almost as if afraid to break it, doesn’t speak this time; just raises a hand in Peter’s direction.

 

And yet, in that one gesture was the unspoken order that pulled a trigger. Peter crumbles.

 

The room lights up with blue energy and a skull-rattling spray of bullets, then, but Peter doesn’t see it. Doesn’t hear it. Doesn’t feel it. All he can feel is the pain pulsing in his lower abdomen and all he can see is the blood stain that slowly darkens his shirt and all he can hear is the sound of his own heart thumping so, so loudly in his ears, like roaring thunder, or a spray of bullets, or, or—

 

“Fuck,” he manages to choke out, as he tries to gain some clarity. “Fuck.” It’s too hard to move, too hard to breathe, too hard to keep his head above the water as his whole world becomes washed up under the roaring tide—

 

“Peter!” someone is screaming. “Peter, get the _fuck_ up!”

 

— _Uncle Ben’s blood, warm through his fingers_ —

 

And he tries — really, he does — but there’s suddenly a needle in his neck and people are banging their fists on their apartment door and Sam is screaming murder from somewhere around him and Peter can only think about how he never finished his goddamn mug of warm milk and honey as he falls deeper and deeper and deeper under the water.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments & kudos are welcomed and appreciated!
> 
> join my discord for free cookies...  
> https://discord.gg/RD7vXjT


	2. bullets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha so .... enjoy ...........  
> note that all foreign languages came from google translate and so i cannot guarantee they'll be accurate. feel free to correct me!  
> thank you tay for sitting in my google doc as i write.
> 
> tw: blood, scars, gun violence.

 

 

 

**Two Years Later**

**15th of June 2020** **  
** **00:31**

 

 

If there’s one thing Peter Parker does well, it’s running away. Nothing tarnishes the speed at which he does so — not the way his ratty trainers skid on the wet concrete as he turns into another branch of the alleyway, not the rain that leaves cold soaking through him to the bone, not even the bullets ricocheting off the drain pipes around him.

 

Behind by a few meters, Miles is struggling to keep up. The guy has never been the most sure-footed of the bunch, but Peter likes running missions with him more than anyone else. “Peter,” he chokes out around heaving breaths. “Peter, we need to— we need to find somewhere to lay low and wait for— oh, _fuck_ , my ankle—”

 

They turn yet another corner, desperate to lose the military officers on their tail. “What is it?” Peter yells over his shoulder.

 

“I don’t— I think— oh my God, that hurts…”

 

Peter has always been a quick thinker, an ability that comes to use many times such as this. He grabs Miles by the forearm, hauling him up so that he can support his bodyweight comfortably with one arm, and uses the other to climb up the wall for the cover atop the roofs. Miles is definitely worn out from all this exertion — his breath is slowly growing laboured and there’s this distinct look in his eyes that just screams in a symphony of exhaustion. He hasn’t been sleeping easy. No one has, not for a while now.

 

“Miles,” Peter hisses, patting at his cheeks. “Miles, keep your eyes open for me, yeah?”

 

“Fucking watch your hands,” Miles wheezes out.

 

Peter doesn’t reply, just rolls up his friend’s trouser leg at the ankle to inspect the damage. It’s as he suspected — the bullet is lodged deep into his ankle, likely deep enough to be touching the bone what with how close the military were to Miles when they’d shot him. Blood leaks from the gash like a dripping tap, leaving chilling lines of red that stain his dark complexity. He guesses that their aim was to demobilise him in order to take him in for questioning and they were dangerously close to succeeding for the most part.

 

The scene feels familiar but he pushes away those recollections, focusing instead on the task at hand. The only friend he has is injured in the most perilous of moments and they have a strict time limit on this mission — there’s not enough time to be thinking of the memories he’s tried so hard to swallow down.

 

“Couldn’t you get shot in the arm?” Peter grumbles, pulling his roll of bandages off his belt. “Ankle injuries are so inconvenient.”

 

 _"You’re_ inconvenient,” Miles snaps.

 

Despite the situation at hand, he finds himself smiling — it’s nice to know that, even when there’s military officers with guns searching for them in every crevice and there’s a good chance they’ll get beaten black and blue when they get back to the Pipe, he can still rely on Miles to be the sarcastic asshole he’s always been.

 

He pulls the roll of bandages off his belt and finds the end of the roll with quivering fingers. There’s blood on his hands, slippery and anxiety-driving. “I can’t get the bullet out,” he says. “Not until we get back. I don’t have any tweezers or anything on me.”

 

Miles struggles against the gentle hold Peter has on his leg, then, kicking out as he tries to sit up. “It’s— it’s still _in_ me?” he stammers.

 

“Sorry. The day I put my fingers inside of your ankle to get that bullet out is the day I die,” Peter says. With two fingers on his chest he pushes Miles back onto the ground, careful to avoid jarring his ankle any more than he has done already. “I’ll get the tweezers out when we get back, yea? Just let me wrap this and I’ll carry you.”

 

“ _Carry_ me? No! I’m not a _baby_ _,_ Peter.”

 

“You have a bullet lodged in your _ankle_.”

 

Miles pauses. “I guess I see your point,” he maunders finally. “You better be strong enough to pick me up.”

  
  
“You know I am.”

  
  
“I know you are, _Spiderman_.”

 

“I _used_ to be Spiderman.”

 

Miles says nothing after that. Peter rolls out a length of the bandage and begins to wrap Miles’ ankle, swallowing the pity that claws at his throat as the older man whimpers in favour of getting the task done. He doesn’t want to waste anymore time — Val is not the kindest of ringleaders, especially when her runners are late coming back from the missions she assigns them. There is no excuse that is considered even remotely acceptable in her books.

 

It takes a good minute to keep Miles from struggling away from him, but he’s eventually ripping the used bandage away from the roll with his teeth and hooking what’s left back to his belt. He finishes only after he’s wrapped a layer of masking tape over it in order to keep it from coming loose with movement.

 

“I’m done,” he says. “Miles. I’m done. Are you alright?”

 

“Just dandy,” Miles bites out through gritted teeth. “Absolutely fucking dandy.”

 

“Want some morphine?”

 

“You have a morphine shot on you and you only _just_ decided to tell me?”

 

He shrugs, unattaching the aforementioned syringe from his belt. “I was more worried about infection, if I’m honest,” he tells Miles, who weakly flips him from the bird. “Brace yourself, Miles, for some sweet, sweet pain relief.”

  


 

.

  


 

 **15th of June 2020** **  
** **14:12**

 

 

They find themselves in Moldova — a country of warm summers and vast, rolling countrysides, with perfect wine and exquisite monasteries dating back to the 15th century. But when coupled with the bloody war raging in the south and its critically endangered national language, Clint Barton cannot deny the animosity he feels as the Quinjet soars over the stretch of breathtaking green.

 

“Pretty,” Natasha comments, beryll eyes swallowing every detail of the landscape that moves past them.

 

“It looks like a painting,” Tony concurs after her. He, too, gazes out of the window, a palm pressed against the glass and his breath leaving condensation. “Too bad we don’t come here to just… hang. What are we doing here, again?”

 

“You were briefed on this two hours ago,” Bruce says, rolling his eyes and pulling out three pieces of paper from under his seat, which he then continues to pass around the cabin.

 

Clint doesn’t need to look at them to remember what they detail — locations, names, dates and several photos taken by some Moldovan citizens of strange, disfigured creatures with curved tails and barbed spines running down their backs, some sort of thick fluid dripping from their scales to leave dark pools under their feet. They had been caught eating garbage in some backstreets in the town of Glodeni before they’d reportedly spotted their photographer and ‘scuttled away like scared beetles’.

 

Bizarre, yes, but Clint would be lying if he were to say he’s surprised by this. With everything that has happened, the prospect of some aliens showing up in Glodeni’s streets just feels… _normal._  It’s a part of life he’s come to accept by now.

 

“They’re so _ugly_ ,” Tony observes, face twisting.

 

Clint, sparing a glance at the man, says, “like you, then.”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

“This is _serious_ ,” Bruce tries.

 

A photo set comes round Clint’s way, then, and he offers it a brief glimpse to remind himself of how ugly these fuckers are — and God, are they _hideous_. It’d been taken from a distance but Clint can still see the way it’s claws curl at the tip and the goopy fluid that runs down it’s scales. The eye slits — at least, he thinks those slits are their eyes — look directly at the photographer with such vile hostility that he shudders just looking at it.

 

“Aliens. Why is it always aliens?” he grumbles, and passes the photos back to Bruce.

  
  
“You should be used to them by now,” Natasha says. She’s collecting her auburn locks into a ponytail, now, in preparation for the humidity of Moldova’s summer weather. Because of her fluency in both Moldovan and Romanian, Natasha is serving as their translator for today. No doubt that they’ll need to start talking to civilians if they want to get a good idea of Glodeni’s newfound alien problem. “If we figure out where they’re coming from, this shouldn’t turn into anything dramatic.”

 

“We just have to get something to analyse,” Bruce reminds them. His boots are resting atop the portable field analysis kit, which sits on the ground in front of his seat, and his cautious eyes sweep the cabin back and forth. “We don’t necessarily have to _fight_ them.”

  
  
“We’re nearly there,” their pilot — some anonymous from SHIELD — reports from the cockpit.

 

Clint turns to the window, then, forgetting the alien for a moment in order to enjoy the view before they land. The dots of housing previously scattered among the stretches of countryside gradually converge into one big clump as the rural area becomes urban. The Quinjet is dipping low enough for the cars on the road to be visible, now, and there is a horse and carriage moving out of the town center. Again, he is struck by the aerial beauty of this country, and wonders why it has to be the place infested by the ugliest aliens in this universe.

 

There’s no time to dwell on that, though. He can see the space where the pilot is going to lower the Quinjet — a flat green somewhere on the Northern edge of the town, sectioned out by the SHIELD agents on the ground. Nearby is the aircraft in which Fury and his team must have arrived in, along with it a black SHIELD Humvee.

 

“Lowering the Quinjet,” the pilot says.

 

“This is a nice town,” Bruce comments passively as he unbuckles himself from his seat. “Too bad Thor isn’t here to see it.”

 

Too bad, indeed — Clint thinks Thor would positively adore Glodeni, with its striking countryside setting that seems to roll on for miles and miles without end. It’s just too bad that the god has taken to spending more of his time in Asgard rather than with the team, but he can’t say he faults the guy for it. _Anyone_ would prefer to hang in their own world rather than someone else’s, really.

 

The Quinjet touches down and the ramp opens slowly. The Iron Man suit is already fitting against Tony’s body as he steps onto the rich Moldovan grass, each metal plate locking into place with a hiss and a click. Natasha picks up Clint’s bow and quivers, slinging them over her shoulder like they’re just a sack of rice. The archer’s warning to her is drowned out by the whine of the jet’s cooling engines.

 

By the time they’ve all gotten off the Quinjet, the engines have silenced and Clint comes jogging down the ramp along with their pilot to take his bow and quivers from Natasha. “My God,” he says, stilling. “It’s so humid. It feels like I just stepped into a sauna.”

 

“I have air conditioning,” Tony informs him, smug as he’s ever been.

 

“Shut up.”

 

It’s then that Fury approaches them, unphased by the heat even in his long, black coat and thick boots. Clint fails to see even a hint of perspiration on his forehead — gosh, does this man even _feel_ things? “You’re late,” he states. A single eye stares them all down, one by one, and Clint is positive that if looks could kill, they’d all be dead on the floor.

 

“Sorry about that,” Bruce says, and scratches the back of his head. “Our pilot took a while figuring out the jet’s complicated controls. Tony feels the need to make everything he creates hard to use, apparently.”

 

“It’s _important,_ ” the billionaire tries, but no one pays attention to him.

 

Fury nods slowly. “I can give you that,” he says. Then, turning to Clint: “where’s Rogers? Wilson?”

 

“Both back at the tower with Barnes,” the marksman supplies with a shrug. “I invited them, just in case, but they’d both said no. I only brought Bruce and Tones with me for their scientific expertise. We don’t need them to be here for this.”

 

“And Thor?”

 

“Asgard.” Natasha sighs. “He doesn’t come around here all too often anymore, not when Loki is causing trouble.”

 

“As usual. You have your photos, people and locations?”

 

Bruce holds up the sheets of paper. “Right here.”

 

“Right.” Fury smooths a hand over his head. “There’s not much more to say. We don’t need you to fight them — I’m talking about _you_ , Stark — and we really want to get this done as fast as possible. Find one, take some of your own photos, take some samples. Whatever you scientist freaks do. Barton is in charge. Romanoff is going to visit and speak to the civilians who took these photos for their insight. Absolutely no funny business. Understood?”

 

“Understood,” Bruce, Clint and Nat say simultaneously. Being polite and respectful to this man has become a force of habit grown out of both good manners and pure fear of his infinite reaches of power, now.

 

Tony, however, is struggling to put himself on the same page. “Barton? In charge?” he says, choking on his laughter.

 

“Understood, Stark?” Fury says again, firmer this time, glare so thunderous that Clint wonders just how Tony is still standing upright. The man really does have superpowers of his own, doesn’t he?

 

“I understand, Eyepatch,” Tony says, but he’s still giggling. “Oh, man. I hope you realise that I’m not going to listen to a word birdbrain says.”

 

Fury doesn’t say anything, but the dry look in his eye speaks a thousand words.

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

 **15th of June 2020  
** **1:35**

 

 **  
** **  
** “We’re so late,” Peter hisses, hauling Miles up further on his hips. “So, so late. Val is gonna kill us. This is on you.”

 

“I’m a gun violence victim,” Miles grumbles into his ear. “I don’t deserve this.”

 

The firelight at the end of the disused sewage pipe casts a soft gradient of orange across the wall and there’s the familiar row of silhouettes sat around the source, their chatter a low-pitched rumble that he could usually call music to his ears.

 

It’s different today, however. He cannot say he’s looking forward to seeing everybody else, not with how badly their mission has gone. Not only has Miles been shot, but they’re coming back half an hour after their allocated time period and he dropped the whole point of their mission — the ignition keys to some of the Transnistrian military Humvees — at some unmentionable point during his rooftop trek back to the Pipe.

 

They’re not going to come out of this one easy, then.

 

“Shut up or I’ll make you walk.”

 

“You wouldn’t,” Miles counters, and Peter decidedly shuts his mouth about it because he’s right — he wouldn’t do that to him, not for a million years.

 

It’s as they near the small mass of people collected around the firepit that they begin to draw attention.  The echo of Peter’s footsteps, usually quiet but this time heavier with Miles’ weight on his back, overpower their conversations and there’s bursts of greetings here and there, hands silhouetted by the spitting fire lifting to wave at them. It’s a nice, familiar sight to come back to what with how hard his day has turned out to be.

 

There is only eleven of them in this branch of the Pipe, merely a fraction of the community rendered homeless and desperate for resources in the midst of the Teren War. It’s been a tough one — with Moldova and Ukraine bearing down on each other with all fingers on their triggers, Transnistria is unfortunate enough to become nothing more than a warzone for a battle they were never involved in. Not only that, but it’s slowly become a home for the refugees that have tried to escape the war-struck areas of their own country… and ended up even more embroiled than they had been originally.

 

Which is when SPANIEL, previously an obscure crime ring, saw their chance to gain some despondent working hands — in return for what the higher-ups unaffectionately call ‘runners’, they offer resources and shelter to those left homeless, starving and searching for clarity. It’s a cruel utilization of the Transnistrian population’s despair but people are more worried about staying alive than the moral side of it all.

 

While it was perhaps not a favoured system, it was one that worked — that is, right up until a group of runners were driven into a corner and killed by military officers on patrol in the area after they’d been ordered to steal a crate or two of the newest gun shipment, and people started to refuse to run missions no matter how many times the SPANIEL higher-ups beat them black and blue.

 

When they began to realise their trade was falling due to the mass of unwilling and determined runners, they instead turned to finding stronger, more capable people in the vigilante business to keep themselves on their feet — and that’s how Peter found himself lugging an injured runner through a giant abandoned sewage pipe, the scar on his stomach a reminder of that night everything changed.

 

The aforementioned injured runner has an unfortunate story, too; he’d been unlucky enough to be visiting a family friend southern Moldova when he’d been swept up by a few lingering SPANIEL officers, ripped away from his family, who were found dead by a couple other runners weeks later when the war was reaching the worst of all peaks.

 

Miles never talks about his family and Peter never talks about his. The touchiness of the subject is mutual.

 

Someone who’s perched on the stone nearest to them stands, then, and Peter can recognise him from the way his silhouette is hunched timidly at the shoulder. “Ai intarziat (You’re late),” Jamie’s soft Romanian accent tells him. “Val nu fi fericit (Val won’t be happy).”

 

“Stiu asta (I know that),” Peter says, careful not to snap — Jamie has always been particularly sensitive regarding how people speak to him, quick to assume that someone is mad with him and difficult to convince otherwise. “Are cineva pensete (does anyone have tweezers)? Пінцети (Tweezers)?”

 

“Stop speaking foreign,” Miles grumbles weakly. “I don’t understand it.”

 

“They don’t understand English, Miles,” Peter counters. He sets the older man down against an empty seat around the fire, crouching to gently stretch out his injured leg. “You should make an effort to learn their languages instead of relying on me to translate for you. It’s a bit inconvenient, y’know?”

 

“What the fuck— _ow!_ What are you doing?”

 

“Unwrapping the bandage. The morphine wore off, then?”

 

There’s blood caked on the underside of the bandage, and he grimaces at the severity of the wound now that he’s got into a place of better visibility. Movement has clearly jarred the gash too much and, though the bleeding stopped a little while ago, he figures that the bullet has done a lot of damage to the inside.

 

“I don’t like that face you’re pulling,” Miles says, breath quickening. “What’s up with it? Am I gonna die?”

 

“I— no. No, you won’t die. Don’t hyperventilate.”

 

Peter doesn’t tell him that there’s a chance he may not be able to walk on his ankle again after this.

 

“Пінцети (tweezers),” a small voice murmurs, and Peter looks up to see one of the younger girls — Yana, he remembers — holding a pair out to him. They’re probably not as clean as he wishes, but there’s not a lot he can do about that in the Pipe. It’s not as if there’s much disinfectant to go around here.

 

“Дякую (thanks),” he says, offering her a smile. Then, turning back to Miles: “you’re gonna need some more morphine for this.”

 

However, before he can even pull the second syringe off his belt, the distinct click of high-heels tapping against concrete bounces off the Pipe’s curved walls and the mildly jubilant conversation around the fire dies down to not even a whisper. A chill runs down Peter’s spine and back again and, this time, it’s not even from the biting, ice-cold wind that breezes down the Pipe every so often.

 

“Val,” Jamie whispers.

 

The clicking grows near and then comes to a stop. No one speaks amidst the quiet — no one has the nerve to.

 

A voice, accented by a Russian background and practically dripping with malice, shatters the silence. “Spider,” it spits out, almost as if disgusted by the mere thought of him, another knot to twist his stomach. “You and Morales were supposed to be back half an hour ago.”

 

“I apologize, ma’am,” Peter says reflexively.

 

She nears them, then, and Peter can see the plain evil written across her pinched brow and dark, thunderous eyes. Valentyna Barinov — head of SPANIEL section A and a real big bitch if he ever saw one. There is always something that seems to be angering her. She could have been told the best, most wonderous news she’s ever received, and she’d come away from it with a sneer on her thin, spiteful lips and her fingers just itching to leave bruises. Today is no different, he observes, with terror threading through his heart.

 

“What was the hold up?” she bites out.

 

“Morales had been shot, ma’am,” Peter tells her. He holds up the tweezers and the morphine shot, both shaking as his hands do. “I was just about to take the bullet out of his ankle now. I’m sorry for the hold-up, and—”

 

“Shut up,” she snaps, and Peter obliges.

 

Val turns to Miles, who is by now feeling the pain of the gunshot wound, leaving his chest quivering and his face pinched. Pity for the man brushes Peter’s heart but he says nothing. He does nothing.

 

“I’m disappointed with you, Morales,” she says, then. “And you, Spider. I thought I could trust you to listen to me, but again and again I am let down by incompetent runners. Especially with your little—” she pauses, as if struggling to communicate even just the concept, “—your stupid little _spider powers_ and your _fancy webs_.”

 

(He decides it isn’t worth mentioning that he doesn’t actually have any webs.)

 

“Understood,” Peter murmurs.

 

Miles keeps his eyes down. “Understood, ma’am.”

 

For a moment, Peter thinks that maybe, just _maybe_ , they will get away with an incomplete mission for today. However, this hope is all but destroyed when she crouches down to their level to meet their eyes and whispers, “did you at least get me those ignition keys?”

 

Peter’s heart seizes in his chest. The grip he has on Miles’ leg grows that little bit tighter as he tries to keep the fear out of his voice. “No, ma’am,” he says, and swallows loudly. “I am sorry to report that they were lost on our way back to the Pipe.”

 

And she doesn’t say anything.

 

It’s the silence that terrifies Peter the most. When she is talking, he can predict what to expect  next from the tone of voice she uses, or from the way she’d move while she speaks — but silence is cold and cruel, serving no indicators of what she’ll do next, giving him no idea as to what she is thinking.

 

The eye contact she makes with him next is the most chilling of it all, though. It’s as if she can see into his very soul with her eyes of icicle blue, piercing and stabbing and twisting and— and—

 

“Are you saying that you didn’t get me the keys.”

 

It isn’t a question.

 

Peter’s eyes flit to the ground like a submissive dog’s. “Yes, ma’am.”

 

She sighs, long and frustrated. Her fingers twitch towards her belt where Peter knows she keeps her favoured dagger in its cowskin sheath. “What do you have to say about this, Morales?” she says, without taking her eyes away from Peter.

 

“I— I don’t know, ma’am.”

 

Peter internalizes his wince.

 

There’s a brief moment where everything seems to still before she is standing up and stepping away from them. Peter cranes his neck to look at Jamie, who presses closer to one of the other Romanian boys — Mihai, he recalls — and back to Miles, whose hands shake even as they grip the fringe of his ratty t-shirt. “That was a bad move,” he whispers, leaning close to Peter, “wasn’t it?”

 

“Yeah,” Peter says, feeling sick. “Yeah, it was.”

 

Val shouts something in Russian (a language Peter hasn’t managed to grasp quite as well as he’d like to) down the west side of the Pipe and it isn’t long before two SPANIEL officers wielding handcuffs and electric cow prods come marching to attention. They wear caps over their serious faces and their uniforms are smoothed down to a near perfect and well put-together form. Peter can see from the subtle twitch in their lips that they aren’t all too happy to be here — but who is when it’s Val they’re working under?

 

She speaks to them in Russian once more and one of the officers steps forward. Peter’s spidey sense shrieks at him to _move,_ to _run,_ but he just lets the man haul him to his feet and clip on those handcuffs that he knows all too well he could easily break apart. The cow prod doesn’t touch him yet but Peter can feel its presence in the officer’s other hand as he swings it in his fingers.

 

He doesn’t so much as think about struggling until the other officer is hauling Miles to his feet, too, a move that rips a raw scream from the older man’s throat as he’s forced to put weight on his injured ankle. “No, no, no,” he says frantically, chest heaving. “Please.”

 

“Let him be!” Peter growls out, but no one pays attention to him.

 

With a wicked smile, Val reaches out a hand to Miles, though with no intention to touch him. She gazes at him with something positively sickening in her eyes, as if she is enjoying watching him cry out in pain — and Peter has absolutely no doubt that she is. “You must learn,” is all she says.

 

Anger rushes through Peter, then, so red and fiery and fierce that he is almost involuntary in ripping himself away from the officer’s hold and towards his friend. But he hardly advances forward a step before the cow prod is crashing into the small of his back and suddenly it’s as if someone has attached a live wire to each of his nerves, violent and breathtaking and hot even after it’s relieved, and he’s left on the ground with his fingers still twitching and liquid fire still running through his veins.

 

For a moment, everything goes black.

 

It’s just as that fire starts to cool down that he regains his clarity and he finds he’s on his feet, once more in the officer’s hold. The cow poker remains hovering beside his knee. He adjusts his head very slightly to look at the other people in their section of the Pipe, all of which stay in their spot around the spitting fire pit, looking anxious in their own right. Jamie is shaking and staring intensely at his feet. Yana is hugging her older sister, sobbing quietly. None of them are watching this ordeal, and for that, Peter is glad.

 

Miles watches him through wild eyes. “Peter,” he murmurs.

 

“I’m okay,” Peter breathes out.

 

(He isn’t okay.)

 

Miles takes a step back onto his ankle, though not without screaming through his teeth, just to keep the cow prod away from his back, too. With his enhanced senses, Peter can hear the crunch of the bullet rubbing against his bone, and he can only imagine just how painful that must feel.

 

“You’re sick,” Miles hisses to the officer, who remains frustratingly passive.

 

In English, Val says to them, “you are not getting off this incident lightly. I hope you know this. It is only to teach you how to behave.”

 

A string of curses threaten to leave Peter’s throat but he swallows them, deciding it better to remain as far from the cow prod as he can manage. Instead he tells her, polite and respectful with his tone despite his raw, unbridled hate for her, “I understand, ma’am.”

 

“Understood, ma’am,” Miles mumbles.

 

She smiles again. It’s infuriating.

 

Once more she is speaking to the officers in Russian — Peter can barely weed out the word ‘hit’ from the foreign speech before the cow prod is delivering a blow to his head and everything is plunged under a cold sea of inky water.

 

 

.

 

 

 

 **15th of June 2020** **  
** **15:02**

 

 

Clint is ecstatic to be team leader and immediately sets off to perimeter the town in search for anything that could hint him as to which direction the alien freaks are coming from, which he figures is an important piece of information to know if they’re going to eventually work on taking them out at their source.

 

He’d asked Tony and Bruce to check out the locations that the aliens had already been photographed at, hoping they’d find some sort of strange residue or some of that disgusting liquid their bodies seem to ooze for analysis. Meanwhile, Natasha had taken it upon herself to visit the homes of those who had taken the aforementioned photos, her fluency in Moldova’s national languages a useful advantage.

 

The track he walks on is of a beaten nature, likely long forgotten save for the occasional tractor if the large tire treads imprinted into the dirt are anything to judge by, though those too are faded and old. In the humid summer heat his bow and quivers feel like a dead weight on his back and so he carries them instead. It leaves his hands sweating, especially under the fingerless gloves, but it’s either that or a sweaty back and Clint definitely knows what he prefers.

 

“Fucking aliens,” he says to no one. “I could be at home with my wife and kids… or back at the tower with my dog and my PS4… but fucking aliens _have_ to ruin my shit, don’t they?”

 

 _“Cheer up, sunshine,”_ Tony’s voice says in his ear, and Clint suddenly remembers he’s got a commlink in.

 

“How’s your side of things?”

 

The resident doctor talks to him next, voice kind and patient. _“There isn’t much at the first location, but we’re going to check out the second one. Will update you with anything we find.”_

 

When he checks his copy of the photos, Clint thinks that they have a high chance of luck at the second location — the alien pictured is the most hideous of them all, nothing but scales and jagged spikes and yellowed teeth, but the goop it oozes pools under its feet and he has no doubt that some of it is still there.

 

But it is as he opens his mouth to relay his positivity that he sees it.

 

A shoe, sticking out of the shallow ditch nearby. It must have been red at one point but it is faded to a dull pink by now, worn thin around the toe and heel and yet there are no holes. The laces are double-knotted and ragged and a healthy layer of black dirt cakes the sole — which is peculiar to Clint, because he hasn’t seen anywhere around here that has dirt that dark to walk around in.

 

 _“Clint?”_ Bruce says.

 

“Hold on. There’s a shoe.”

 

Tony snorts. _“A shoe? What has a shoe got to do with anything?”_

 

A shoe tends to be nothing to worry about, but there’s something about this particular shoe that gives Clint chills to the stomach. Maybe it’s the black dirt or maybe it’s the ragged laces — he isn’t sure what is so anxiety-driving about the shoe, but there it is, taking the wheel and locking him in the trunk anyway.

 

He steps closer to it in cautious silence, stopping a safe distance away to lean over and take a tiny peek, and—

 

—and there’s a guy.

 

A guy, lying unconsciously in a shallow Moldovan ditch, just outside of the northern city of Glodeni.

 

_What the fuck?_

 

“What the fuck?”

 

 _“What is it?”_ Tony questions.

 

Clint takes another few steps closer to the ditch, half-positive that the guy isn’t a threat. “Turns out the shoe is attached to somebody.”

 

 _“What?”_ Natasha’s distant voice inputs, the first thing she’s said since they turned their commlinks on.

 

 _“Somebody?”_ Bruce angles for elaboration.

 

Clint doesn’t manage to hear what Tony has to say before he’s cutting off his commlink connection. Their questions and concerns rattling in his ear is the last thing he needs right now. “Hello?” he calls out to the guy. “Hello? Are you awake?”

 

He gets no response. The silence that his question draws out is eerie and leaves something uneasy twisting the pit of Clint’s stomach. He really, really hopes he hasn’t just come across a dead body — this is not the kind of mess he wants to involve himself in with both war and an alien problem looming around the corner.

 

The first thing that Clint notices when he looks over at the guy’s face is the gash on his left temple, aggressive and violent and still leaking ever so slowly with blood that leaves lines of red across his skin. It is yet another twist to his stomach — a wound of that magnitude by itself does enough damage, but a wound of that magnitude to the _head_ is a thousand times worse. The guy may have brain damage or he may be braindead. There isn’t a way to tell until he can get someone else to look at it.

 

He cautiously puts a hand up to the guy’s nose, next, hoping for some evidence that he’s at least still breathing. It’s as if someone poured a bucket of relief over his body when he feels the  puff of air against his fingers, and even though it’s shallow and raspy, Clint thinks that it's enough for now.

 

But it’s as he sits back on his haunches to evaluate the situation that he notices it — the bloodstain on his shoulder, steadily bleeding a pool of red into his thinning grey shirt. Clint hurries to lift the guy’s shirt in order to observe the extent of the damage and what he sees leaves his heart dropping into his toes.

 

There is a whole diagram of scars marring his body, some small and faint and pink and others large and jagged and so, so prominent against the pale olive of his skin that he wonders if they still hurt. He doesn’t think about it, though — just works on applying pressure to the bullet wound that still spits blood like a tap, adding to the waterfall of red that already stains his chest and stomach.

 

Then one of the scars catch his eye.

 

It isn’t an angry scar like the others. It isn’t one that was aggressively dealt, that happened in the midst of meaningless violence. No — this is a scar that has been drawn on so precisely, so perfectly, and makes out the profile of a dog. A spaniel, Clint recalls as he studies the outline of its head, but with eyes so pointed and dark. He thinks that somewhere, somehow, he’s seen this mark before.

 

And that’s when it hits him.

 

“This is real bad,” Clint says as he turns on his commlink once more.

 

It’s Tony who speaks first. _“What? What’s real bad?”_

 

“There’s a guy bleeding out in a ditch and he’s got a tattoo that I think I recognise.”

 

 _“You do?”_ Natasha tries.

 

Clint swallows. “SPANIEL.”

 

There’s a pause. _“Shit,”_ Natasha says.

 

 _“We’re coming to your location now, Clint. Hold tight and put pressure on whatever is bleeding,”_ Bruce tells him, voice weary.

 

Distantly, he wonders whether Fury would call this ‘funny business’.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehehe val is so mean
> 
> join my discord and scream at me or somethin idk  
> https://discord.gg/rQpAKZz


	3. missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!  
> sorry for the wait.
> 
> tw: scars, violence.

 

 

 

**17th of June 2020**

**08:29**

 

“They’re gone. They’re fucking gone!”

 

Val slams the office door with such a force that Benjamin Barinov is just about startled out of his seat. He jerks his head up from the paperwork he’s been leaning over for the past half an hour. “Jesus, Val,” he breathes out around a breezy smile. “You nearly made me jog my handwriting.”

 

“Who gives a single shit about your handwriting?” Val’s Russian comes out hard and sharp, and she collapses into her own desk chair across the room from Benjamin’s. “I lost them. I lost our best runners and now no one will do my fucking missions. Saying they don’t want to be shot and electrocuted when they get it wrong. Fucking idiots.” She lets out a sigh that he could almost call defeated, but he’s known her long enough to know that she’s anything but. “I had to send out my guards to get the keys of that Humvee today. My guards!”

 

“Well...”

 

“I don’t want to hear it.”

 

Entirely unphased by her anger, Benjamin spins back and forth in his swivel chair. “What are you going to do, then?” he challenges her. “Are you finally going to let me try and grab Sam Alexander again or are you going to get me to try and find them?”

 

“Shut up.”

 

“Shutting up.”

 

Benjamin obediately returns to filling out his paperwork, unwilling to even _try_ to talk to his sister when she’s in a bad mood. She’s always been the most aggressive of them both even in their childhood years, constantly demanding this and that while Benjamin much preferred to be the peaceful and passive one. When their parents died a tragic death and she became ringleader to Transnistria’s most notioriously dangerous underground crime circle, he couldn’t say that he was surprised.

 

While SPANIEL’s business is somewhat immoral – especially in the midst of the Teren War – he certainly appreciates the position he’s in now. With his sister in power, he automatically gets assertion above the rest, which means he avoids the worst of it and actually has a pretty good time in the Pipe. He even gets to keep his loyal German Shephard, Biggie, who sits at his feet as he works and is all too happy to follow him around as he goes as long as he gets fed.

 

Val’s fist suddenly hits the table and Benjamin’s hand shoots across the page, leaving a line of biro right across his document. He turns to yell at her but what with how she’s standing from her seat, now, with her whole body quaking with unbridled anger, he decides it can wait until later.

 

He tilts his head. “Val?”

 

Biggie must sense her tension because he’s standing from his spot at Benjamin’s feet, padding across the office to dig his cold, wet nose into the palm of her hand that she leaves hanging at her sides. But apparantly not even the comfort of a golden-hearted dog is enough to keep her calm because she’s shoving his snout away from her, stamping at the ground until he shrinks back to Benjamin’s feet in fear of being kicked.

 

“We need to find them,” she hisses. “I don’t care about Morales. Find me the spider and I won’t kill your stupid dog.”

 

“What?”

 

She opens the door. All at once, the stench of stale smoke and mould from the Pipe overwhelms the once pleasant smell of the office. From some distant section of the Pipe, he can hear some of the refugees jovially singing an old Romanian campfire song. Val doesn’t step out, just looks back over her shoulder at her brother. “Find me Parker,” she bites out, “and I won’t kill your dog. One mistake and you’ll get his corpse for your birthday. Got me?”

 

Benjamin is suddenly hyperaware of Biggie’s presence at his feet. “Y-yes, Val. I’ll find him.”

 

“Good.” She steps out of the door, pauses, and then steps back again. “That’s Ma’am to you, little brother.”

 

“Yes, Ma’am.”

 

Biggie looks up at him as he listens to her high-heels echo away down the Pipe.

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

**17th of June 2020**

**09:47**

 

SPANIEL first fell under SHIELD’s radar back in 2003 after there had been reports of strange ‘gang’ activity in a Nothern sector of Transnistria, once a state of Moldova but now an independent soviet country of it’s own right.

 

They had not touched it. There was not really a reason to, back then. There are gangs everywhere in the world, after all, and they are not the kind of problem that SHIELD deals with. Compared to the global threats of alien or terrorist attacks that they tackle, a gang problem in Transnistria is irrelevent.

 

It was in 2005 that this gang were regarded to be ‘too much for the police to handle’, and the government instead sent in the military to deal with them. Their original aim was to arrest and jail the ringleaders of the organisation for they believed that ridding the group of those in charge would disperse them and therefore bring their threat scale back down to a more managable level.

 

However, this was not any old street gang – this gang was smart, was always a step ahead and always managed to slip away without so much as leaving a trace. They would track down one base of operations but it would already be cleared of all evidence that anyone was there in the first place before they even get there. Their murders were always clean and never caught on camera – and they always left the profile of a spaniel dog carved over the hearts of their victims. It was this that gave them their chilling nickname – ‘The Ghost Dogs’.

 

It was the spring of 2007 when the first president of the country – Igor Smirnov, Clint remembers – was found dead in his own home and SHIELD finally threw their hats into the investigation.

 

It at first seemed hopeful when they managed to get an undercover agent into the organisation, but then he, too, was found dead in a Ukaranian ditch and with the word ‘TRATIOR’ carved into his forehead and a dog over his heart. The location of their base of operations given by that agent unsurprisingly came up with nothing – they’d already moved, presumably – and the names they’d been given run up nothing in their databases. All their leads, along with a valued agent, was lost within a matter of three distressing days.

 

With Igor’s death on his mind, Clint steps into the infirmary. The first thing he notices is that the aggressive bruises that’d been smudged across the patient’s face only two days ago are completely and utterly gone. It’s almost as if they’d never been there in the first place.

 

That in itself is strange – he’s hurt himself enough to know that bruises so dark and angry as his had been should not have faded until perhaps three or four days later, and even then they tend to yellow out before they eventually taper back into the original skin shade. Where he expects marks of deep yellow to be marring his face, there is olive skin as clear as the sky is blue.

 

Clint eventually chalks his suspiscion up to his lack of formal medical training and sits down in the chair beside the bed, gingerly placing his bottle of water on the sidetable. Fear of awaking the guy has been ramped high – no one save for Bruce has so much as touched him in order to avoud stirring him from his sleep, for the doctor insists that only rest will help him now. He’s sure he has no real brain damage other then a concussion from what the scanners relay, but he can only tell when he eventually awakes in his own time. To heal properly from not only the head wound but also from the bullethole in his shoulder, he’s going to need plenty of quiet, calm and unbothered sleep.

 

He almost doesn’t want the guy to wake up, for he has no doubt that he’ll feel awfully confused in the new environment and that isn’t something he entirely looks forward to dealing with. How do you tell someone that they’ve been rescued from a ditch in Nothern Moldova by the Avengers? Does he even know who the Avengers are? Who even knows if they’re popular in Moldova as they are in New York?

 

It’s with these questions in mind that he flits his eyes back over the stranger again, looking for any sort of sign that he may wake up. Under the blaring infirmary lights, he has noticed much more about him than he could have ever done back in Moldova.

 

The guy couldn’t be older than twenty-five, really, with his uncreased skin and youthful, sleeping face that he can almost call peaceful. Bruce must have washed his hair at one point or another because where it had been greasy and stuck to his skin by sweat only a day ago, it is now soft and fluffy, lying across his forehead in a cresendo of tawny brown. He is just that little bit too skinny but not fatally so, and Clint thinks he can see a lithe build up of lean muscle on those noodle arms of his.

 

But then the sun touches his face with golden tendrils and the shadows it leaves across his skin only serve to highlight the purple exhaustion smudged under his eyes and Clint finds his stomach growing more and more hollow the longer he dares to look.

 

He sees a scar, then, slicing a slit through his left eyebrow and missing his outer canthi by nothing more than a mere fraction of a millimeter. Against the olive shade of his skin it is a thin line of white and it is jagged, as if dealt in the midst of violence by a finely-sharpened dagger. It is only small but it takes Clint’s mind back to the dog-shaped scar he’d seen cut into the patient’s skin two days ago when he’d first come across him.

 

It’s that thought that reminds Clint what they could possibly be dealing with here. SPANIEL are not so known outside of the secret agent side of life for they have a habit of keeping every movement under wraps, but where they’re known, they’re feared – even by Natasha, a woman who doesn’t seem to be scared of anyone or anything. They’ve never directly impacted their lives, so to say, but what little they know of the organization’s numerous ringleaders is more than enough to cement their opinions on the matter.

 

The dog-shaped scar is the mark of SPANIEL, sliced into everyone who tangles with them so as to serve as a reminder of who they ‘belong’ to. It’s odd to think of how people can feel so trapped by only the scar but it’s nothing to laugh about – it’s pure psycological terror. He’s one hundred percent sure that the organization threaten everyone who they think they ‘possess’ to such an extent that the victim themselves start to believe what they want them to.

 

“You’re going to be a tough one,” Clint murmurs, standing up from his chair and crossing the room to leave. He doesn’t take his water bottle with him. He casts a final look at the guy as he’s stepping through the threshold before he finally shuts the door and takes the elevator down to the communal floor.

 

Even before he can step into the communal living room, Sam bounces up to him. He must have only woken up a little while ago – he’s still wearing his glasses where he usually replaces them with contacts later on in the day and he’s still not wearing a shirt. His grey sweatpants ride low on his hips. He brandishes two iced coffees from their local coffeehouse, one of which he offers to Clint, who takes it gratefully. “Enjoy your coffee. It cost me four dollars,” he says.

 

“I needed me some iced coffee.” Clint takes a long slurp from the straw. It’s his favourite kind – biscuit-coloured and piled with sweetners, with the icecubes crushed and blended instead of whole. Sam has a habit of remembering how everybody he knows likes their coffee.

 

“You owe me four dollars.”

 

Clint says, “you ever going to put on a shirt?”

 

“It’s too early for shirts. How’s the guy?”

 

Of course – Sam hasn’t met the Tower’s newest patient as of yet. “Unconscious,” Clint answers dismissively, “and too young. Thanks for the coffee.”

 

“’Too young?’” Sam repeats, angling for elaboration. He follows the marksman like a lost puppy as he crosses the living room and heads to the kitchen. “What do you mean by ‘too young’? Is he- is he like, eleven?”

 

“No one is ever old enough to have as many scars as he does, Sam.”

 

The younger man’s forehead creases. “Are they… are they bad?”

 

“The scars?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Clint thinks back to what he saw back in Moldova when he first discovered the guy. Thinks back to all the scars he saw criss-crossing his body, some violent and aggressive, some careful and precise and clearly the product of purposeful torture. Thinks back to the outline of the spaniel’s head carved over his heart. There isn’t a way to put the sheer severeity of it into words he can speak.

 

So, instead, he says, “they’re… they’re bad.”

 

They’re heavy words. Sam slouches at the shoulders. “I’ll take your word for it,” he says.

 

Clint turns to answer his friend when JARVIS’ British intone suddenly appears over their heads. “Sir has asked me to gather everybody in conference room A. He says it regards the new patient that Mr. Barton has found recently.”

 

“Is conference room A the old one? With the sofa?” Sam asks.

 

“Yeah. Let’s see what Tony found,” Clint supplies with a shrug, and takes his iced coffee with him up to the aforementioned conference room.

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

**17th June 2020**

**08:52**

 

Liev Averin is a Ukaranian man of the intelligent sort, with black hair and a beard trimmed to sharp edges. No one talks to him – not unless they need him for his technological expertise – and so he learned to be a quiet type over time, speaking only when spoken to and never initiating conversation if he doesn’t deem it necessary. It’s that malluable sort of attitude that got him under SPANIEL’s radar, for they think of him as easy to control, someone with no opinions to share, no morals to destroy.

 

And so he sits in this dark room, spinning absently on his swivel chair, slurping on a diet Coke from the box he stores in his stuttering mini-fridge, surrounded by a mass of computers that beep and blare and show him things he doesn’t really care about, waiting for some technology to break so that he can go out and fix it. This is his job – he waits for people to need him and does a brilliant job when they do. It’s a lonely way to live.

 

His can is eventually empty and he’s wheeling over to the mini-fridge to grab another when the door slams open and Benjamin comes sprinting in, tripping on a box of broken motherboards as he does so. At his feet is his loyal German Shephard, Biggie, who’s tail waves in greeting and large paws step all over the dirt on the floor. “Liev, we need you,” he breathes out in Ukaranian, a language they share despite Benjamin’s natively Russian background – down in the diversity of the Pipe, one learns many languages.

 

“What for?”

 

“Sit down, you don’t need to go anywhere. We’ve lost two of our runners. We need you to locate their trackers for us.”

 

Liev sighs and closes the mini-fridge with his foot. “This might take a while, the tracker has been awfully slow lately.” He reaches over to his laptop and opens up one of the applications desplayed on the desktop. “Their names?” he asks.

 

“Peter Parker and Miles Morales.”

 

As he’s typing up their names in the search bar, Liev murmurs, “Peter Parker, huh?”

 

“You know him?”

 

“Yeah. How could I not?”

 

Everybody knows of Peter Parker down here in the Pipe – every runner, every medic, every officer, even ever humble technician much like himself. How could they not know him, when Val spends every moment of her day grumbling about his antics and his ‘stupid little spider powers’? When he’s known as Spiderman back in his home country? When he’s rocked up a vigilante duo with Nova so awesome that they even know about them over here in obscure little Transnistria?

 

Peter Parker could almost be considered a legend within their community, but Liev has talked to someone who lives in the same section of the Pipe as him – some Romanian kid called Jamie, perhaps – and he found out that Peter Parker is actually a very down-to-earth, kind and realistic sort of character. He is apparantly very selfless in his actions and does his best to help everybody else before himself. It was that which caused Liev to realise that a ‘superhero’ personality really did exist.

 

Benjamin, who now perches on a nearby countertop, nods thoughtfully and says, “I’ve never met the guy. He wasn’t even supposed to be here. My… my original target was proving too difficult to handle and he was conveniently there next to him.” He laughs and shakes his head. “The poor guy. I feel for him, sometimes. He doesn’t deserve this life. Val is too hard on him.”

 

“He wasn’t your original target, huh?” Liev says, encourgaing elaboration.

 

“Originally, it was Sam Alexander,” Benjamin tells him. “Otherwise known as Nova. Peter Parker’s boyfriend.”

 

“They’re boyfriends _and_ crime fighters.”

 

“Cooler then you and that guy you’re with. Korla, or whatever his name is,” Benjamin says, grin sharp and toothy like a shark’s. There’s no venom behind it, just platonic affection built over years of working together.

 

“ _Koyla_ ,” Liev corrects. “And we don’t need to be cooler than Nova and Spiderman. Me and Koyla are very happy being lame and boring in an old pipeline together.”

 

“Whatever. Has the search finished?”

 

Liev turns in his swivel chair to look at his laptop screen. There is only a single location marked on the map presented to him – and that location is Manhattan, New York. The name above the aforementioned mark reads ‘Peter Parker’. He drags his mouse around the map in hope that the program made a mistake, but he doesn’t seem to be able to find the second marker anywhere. “Peter Parker is in New York… but Miles Morales’ tracker has been disabled.”

 

“What?”

 

“Miles Morales’ tr-”

 

“I heard you the first time,” Benjamin snaps, then, and rolls Liev’s swivel chair out of the way so that he can have a better look at the screen. He stares at it for a full minute before he finally stands up straight and whispers into his hands, “shit.”

 

“Why is Peter Parker in New York?” Liev asks.

 

“I don’t know,” Benjamin says, shaking his head. “I don’t know. All I know is that they messed up a mission and so Val got them punished. That’s all I know. And now she’s- she’s telling me that we need to find them. She says that they were her best runners. She threatened to kill Biggie if I don’t find them soon.” He shudders. “That woman is insane. Why would she threaten Biggie?”

 

The dog in question must hear his name because he lifts his head from where he’s been investigating the dust pile swept underneath a desk holding some other computers and a speaker. Attentive ears swivel back and fourth around the room. Then, as if sensing Benjamin’s anxieties, he pads over to his handler and digs his large, wet snout into the pit behind his knee, sighing out a soft whine.

 

Liev may work for an underground crime ring that takes advantage of the homeless and desperate in the midst of a war in order to make more money they won’t be sharing, but he isn’t heartless enough to let that woman kill his friend’s handsome dog. He picks up his laptop and shoves it into Benjamin’s hands. “Take that to Val. The least you can do is retrieve Peter Parker for her.”

 

“You’re a good man, Liev.” Benjamin, awkwardly juggling the laptop in one hand, delivers a friendly pat to the technician’s shoulder. He says as he opens the door, “I’ll bring this back when I can, yeah?”

 

“You’d better.”

 

“Come on, Biggie. Thank you for your help, Liev. It is always appriciated.”

 

As Benjamin and his dog depart, Liev pokes his head around the threshold and shouts to him, “don’t look at my search history!”

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

**17th of June 2020**

**10:02**

 

It’s one of those still, quiet mornings where everybody is just so sleepy and Clint thinks that the whole tower can feel it. Steve and Bucky lie haphazardly together on the sofa pushed into one corner of the room, the former with his eyes half-closed and the latter quite peacefully combing fingers of both metal and flesh through his blonde hair.

 

Natasha sits on one of the chairs around the table with her feet up on the table. Her hair is tied back into a tidy ponytail and she’s wearing a facemask, clearly disgruntled that she’d been distrupted out of her morning routine. God, if only he had a camera on him – it’s so rare to see her looking so domestic instead of like a superspy. Bruce sits bemusedly next to her with his tablet on his lap and a considerable amount of hot coffee in his mug. He’s the picture of sleepiness – he’s wearing his glasses instead of contacts and he still yawns every so often, something Clint finds out of place for Bruce adopted Tony’s sleeping schedule not to long ago.

 

The only person who doesn’t look so tired is Tony, though Clint chalks that down to how he’s become immune to exhaustion due to his erratic sleeping schedule. The arc reactor glows a soft blue under his ratty band t-shirt. He’s stood up at the end of the conference table, scrolling through his tablet with it’s stylus.

 

The atmosphere of the room is quiet and comfortable – only to be ruined when Sam steps into the room from behind Clint, slides into a seat and says way too loudly, “hey, guys. What’re we doing here?”

 

Clint steps in after him, then. “JARVIS told you, dummy,” he says. He takes the seat beside Sam and raps his fists impatiently on the conference table. “Let’s get this started so I can go buy some donuts.”

 

“Get me one,” Tony says.

 

“I’m getting you a box, Tones.”

 

“That’s generous of you.”

 

“It’s _your_ money.”

 

The billionaire shrugs. “The sentiment is appreciated,” he says innocently. “Are we all here? Do I have to register attendance? Sam, why are you not wearing a shirt?”

 

“Because it’s hot.”

 

Tony blinks, and then shrugs. “I’ll get on fixing the AC later.”

 

Adjusting the hairband on her ponytail, Natasha says, “let’s hurry up so Clint can buy me a box of donuts,” she tells Tony.

 

The man happily obliges. “Right. So I was doing some research about this guy and...” He drags a finger off his tablet and what is shown on the screen suddenly appears as a hologram beside him. Clint didn’t expect Tony to actually find anything on the guy considering how good SPANIEL has been at concealing the online identities of those they try to find, and so looking at the three missing person reports – each for the same person – is something he can call a gigantic relief.

 

“Sam Alexander, Michelle Jones and Ned Leeds all reported someone by the name of ‘Peter Benjamin Parker’ missing to the police on the 21stof November 2018,” Tony tells them, as to interpret what they’re looking at. “However, the case went cold a good while ago now. They have no idea where he went and they gave up on him, just like that.

 

“But then I did some research into this ‘Peter Benjamin Parker’...” Tony takes the hologram of the reports away and replaces them with a photo – one of a face that looks much too familiar. “This is him. The guy that you rescued from that ditch.”

 

Youthful olive skin, a button nose, a mess of tawny brown hair that looks messy and yet neat all at once. It’s the same face as the guy lying in the infirmary right now, unconscious, beaten and with a bullethole in his shoulder, and yet there’s something about it that doesn’t quite look right.

 

It dawns to Clint, then – there are no bruises, no cuts, no scars, no wounds. His eyes sparkle, brown and bright and intelligent and so, so happy. Compared to the man lying only a few floors above them, this is a whole different person. And it’s… startling.

 

Tony says again, “right?”

 

“Right,” Clint murmurs.

 

“Mmm. So we found him.” Tony takes away the hologram, but he doesn’t replace it with another. Instead he looks up and meets them right in the eyes. “I found some about him, too. I found out that his parents were Richard and Mary Parker.” His gaze flits to Natasha and Clint. “You know who they are. Right?”

 

Clint’s breath catches in recognition.

 

Captain Richard Parker, before he had been recruited by Nick Fury to the C.I.A, had been a decorated soldier of the United States Army Special Forces. Mary Fitzpatrick was daughter of an O.S.S agent – “Wild Will” Fitzpatrick – and attended the best of schools throughout her childhood before she eventually became a C.I.A translator and data analyst.

 

They had met and fallen in love on the job – Clint never knew them well, but he knew them enough to know that much. When Mary eventually became a field agent, it gave the pair an easy cover an easy cover as a married couple while on undercover missions. Their most interesting mission was one Clint was very much aware of – they were assigned to investigare Baroness Adelica Von Krupp, who’d captured an agent of a “friendly power.”

 

… who turned out to be the Wolverine.

 

The last Clint heard of Richard and Mary Parker, the third Red Skull had taken down their plane while they were travelling to Sweden in order to turn in reportedly unknown details of a discovery, consequently murdering the both of them. They were declared ‘MIA/presumed dead’ as the two bodies at the scene were never offically identified.

 

He hadn’t been sad at the time. He never knew them well enough to find their death any different to the rest of them – but the knowledge that they left behind a son certainly does make him think a little more.

 

“I know of them,” Natasha says. “They died.”

 

“I never knew they had a son,” Clint says as nonchalantly as possible.

 

“Who did he live with after that?” Steve asks from the sofa, and Clint startles, having only just remembered the man was there in the first place.

 

“His aunt and uncle,” Tony says, reading off his tablet. He scrolls a little further and Clint sees his brows drop. “His uncle was shot a long time ago. When the kid was… fourteen. And… his aunt died in an apartment fire when he was fifteen.” The billionaire looks up with a wince. “Ouch. That’s got to hurt.”

 

Bruce sips from his coffee. “Yikes.”

 

“Big yikes,” Sam says.

 

“So how did he end up in Moldova?” Bucky says, flexing the wrist joint on his prosthetic. “It’s no use finding out this when we don’t even know how he got there.”

 

This is when Clint decides it best to give them a little more insight on the dog-shaped scar carved over his heart. He braces his hands on the arm rest of the chair to stand up so as to keep the attention on himself as he speaks, but he doesn’t get to so much as move before the lights switch to a chilling red and JARVIS is suddenly crackling to life above them.

 

“There is an intruder in the building,” the AI tells them. “They are in Mr. Parker’s infirmary room.”

 

Almost at once, everybody is scrambling for the door. “JARVIS, keep those intruders out of there!” Tony yells, throwing his tablet onto the table and racing for the elevator. Natasha gets to it first, with so much speed that her shoulder hits the opposite wall.

 

Clint sticks to her heel, with Sam at his. His heart races in his chest and anxiety curls in his stomach as he weights the possibilites. Whoever this intruder is, Clint has no doubt that they come from SPANIEL – likely looking for their missing officer. How could he fucking forget that they implant tracking devices into everybody tangled within the organisation? Why didn’t he ask JARVIS to look for that? Why is he so fucking _stupid_ -

 

“Barton! Fuck- Barton!”

 

“What?”

 

“Move!” Sam pushes him out of the elevator and onto the infirmary floor. Tony must have gone to get a suit from the workshop and Steve his shield, for only Bruce, Natasha, Sam and Bucky stay with him. “JARVIS, how’s it looking?”

 

“They have broken through the window,” JARVIS reports.

 

The resident shoves a shoulder roughly into the infirmary door but it must have been jammed shut from the other side, because it hardly budges even with his full strength. “Shit, shit, shit,” he mutters, trying again. Nothing more happens and he momentarily considers his options. “Bruce, do me a favour?”

 

Bruce opens his mouth, but the doctor doesn’t have time to even tempt Hulk out of where he hides before Bucky is pushing past Clint and slamming his own body into the door. With the added weight of his prosthetic, he sure is a force to be reckoned with, and whatever was jamming the door shut breaks apart at the second shove he tries.

 

There’s a loud, resounding bang as Bucky kicks the door off it’s hinges. Clint and Sam both push ahead to get in there first with only their fists at hand to help them – and then skid to a stop when they step into the infirmary to see nothing but an empty bed and glass all over the floor where the window had been smashed.

 

Oh.

 

Oh, no.

 

“J, lock onto that tracker,” Natasha murmurs defeatedly.

 

“Tracker?” Tony repeats as he steps slowly into the room – without the Iron Man suit. JARVIS must’ve told him that the intruders had already left and been successful. “And that’s how they found him.” He rubs a tired hand over his face. “Oh, no.”

 

Oh, no indeed.

 

It’s then that Steve appears, shield in his large hands. “Are we going to follow that tracker? JARVIS, mind showing us where it’s heading?”

 

Clint is positive that JARVIS will bring up a map detailing the tracker’s location, but he doesn’t. Instead, he just sounds solemn as he says, “it appears that the tracking device previously found in Mr. Parker’s body has been destroyed. I have lost connection to it and cannot see where it is going.”

 

“Already?” Bruce breathes.

 

“They’re determined to cover their tracks,” Natasha murmurs. She runs a hand over the infirmary bed and then sits down on it’s dented mattress. “What are we going to do next?”

 

Clint scrambles to look out of the window, but he sees nothing that could help them. Whoever had taken Peter Benjamin Parker is gone for good.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments make me write faster boys....
> 
> join my discord! i make stupid jokes! we're all gay!   
> https://discord.gg/rQpAKZz


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